Upholstery in
Eaglemont

Eaglemont's houses tend to be older and larger than a lot of the newer pockets nearby, and the furniture inside them has often been there as long as the house has stood. A dining suite bought when the family moved in, a lounge that came from a parent's house before that. When it finally needs work, the owner is rarely looking to replace it. They want it put back to what it was.

That expectation runs through nearly every Eaglemont job. People here have generally already worked out that a solid hardwood frame is worth more than a flat-pack replacement, and they are prepared to have the work done properly rather than quickly. It is a suburb where quality over price is simply the assumption going in, not something we have to argue for.

It also means we see a genuine mix: full antique restorations sitting alongside straightforward recovers of a lounge that has just worn through. Not everything from Eaglemont is a hundred years old, but the standard expected of the finished piece does not change either way.

An Eaglemont restoration usually starts with an honest look at what is underneath the cover before we quote anything. If the horsehair is still sound it gets kept, pulled out, re-carded back into shape and returned to the piece rather than swapped for foam, because that is what keeps an antique reading as an antique.

Hessian and webbing that have given up are not patched. They come out entirely and go back in new, and where the frame is built for it we still hand tie springs in the traditional nine-way pattern, which is slower than stapling a foam base in but holds its shape for decades rather than a couple of years.

The timber side of the job is just as much a part of an Eaglemont piece as the upholstery. Show-wood, carved details and hall furniture get French polished by hand on the same bench, stripped back, filled and rebuilt in shellac, which keeps the finish true to the period rather than looking sprayed on.

The most common issue with an older Eaglemont piece is not the cover, it is what is holding the cover up. Decades of use loosen frame joints, dry out timber and flatten out springs or webbing until they no longer hold a seat's shape. None of that shows up properly in a photo, which is why we strip a piece back before quoting what it needs rather than guessing from the outside.

That strip-down is when the real decisions get made: whether the horsehair is worth re-carding, whether the frame needs re-gluing before anything else touches it, and whether the piece suits hand tied springs or a webbed base. Recovering a piece without fixing what is underneath just means doing the same job again within a couple of years.

For the more everyday Eaglemont pieces, the fix is simpler: fresh Dunlop HR35 foam at the density the piece needs, firm or soft, and a fabric chosen to handle the house it is going back into. We recommend at least 25,000 Martindale rubs for a family sofa, more again with dogs in the house, and there is more detail in our guide to pet and kid friendly fabric.

The restorer and French polisher on our team has fifty years in the trade, our machinist thirty, and the upholsterer twenty two, roughly a century of combined experience, and all three trades work out of the one Eltham North workshop. For a suburb like Eaglemont, where a piece often needs its frame repaired, its springs re-tied and its timber French polished, that saves a piece being shipped between three different workshops.

Hardwood frames we build carry a thirty year guarantee on the frame itself, and we are fully insured for everything that happens on the bench. Eaglemont customers are welcome to come and see the workshop and look through fabric in person, best to call ahead as it is a residential address.

Our quote covers stripping the piece back to its frame, an honest assessment of whether the existing horsehair, hessian and webbing are worth keeping, new Dunlop foam where it is needed, and a cover cut and sewn to the piece rather than stretched over what was already there. That is what proper restoration costs, priced at what the work and the materials actually require. A quote well below that has usually left something out.